


my face flashing crimson from the fires of hell

by ork



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Leia/Sabine is featured but is not the focus of this fic, Not Canon Compliant, Revenge, ft. Leia going Full Anakin, ft. Ventress in a flashback, ft. the iconic white dress covered in blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 09:52:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13633869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ork/pseuds/ork
Summary: Pain was their life sentence.Revenge is their birthright.-Re-uploaded after deleting account.





	my face flashing crimson from the fires of hell

**Author's Note:**

> The "Graphic Depictions of Violence" is one slightly too enthusiastic stabbing scene at the end. If you'd rather skip that, stop reading after "Maybe they'd both known that all along." when it switches back to Leia's pov.
> 
> This was written as catharsis for personal issues first and fanfiction second, so please keep that in mind if it's too ooc.
> 
> Title from _Flesh and Bone_ by the Killers.

 

If Ahsoka had a credit for every time a man hurt her, she'd be a rich woman.

 

It was something Ventress had said to her, way back when, in those bitter, painful days after she first left the Order. She had been lying on the sagging couch in the first of several dim and smoky flats they'd shared, while Ventress leaned against the counter and slowly polished off a bottle of Old Corellian Style.

“Are you going to ask Nona for the rest of what she owes us today?” Ahsoka had said finally, raising her head. The Mikkian had hired them for a bounty hunting job, or more specifically, an assassination. Ahsoka had missed that detail of the contract, as it had been written in a twist of an eyebrow, a couple of coughs and a downcast gaze, and an understanding nod from Ventress.

“I don't think so,” Ventress had said, pouring another mini-shot into the bottle cap.

“Why not? You told her ten thousand credits, and she only gave us four thousand of that.”

“I know.”

Ahsoka had waited, and when Ventress said nothing more, pressed on. “Rent is tomorrow.”

“It'll take care of itself.”

It wouldn't, but she'd been too tired to argue. Her eyelids had drifted closed. After long minutes had passed, Ventress went on in her gravely voice.

“There are some jobs that aren't about the credits.” She'd thrown a pointed look at Ahsoka, who sat up halfway. “ _You_ , of all types, should know that. I don't know what that man was to her – husband, boyfriend, brother, father – but she needed him out of her life. She needed him dead. She had four grand, and that's what she gave us. I don't work for free. But there are some things I'll do for less.”

She'd drained the last from the bottle and set it down with surprising gentleness. “If I had a credit for every time a man did me wrong, I'd be karking rich, kiddo. So would you.”

 

* * *

 

Ahsoka Tano is thirty-six standard years old, and the cruelty of those years has begun to etch itself onto her face in lines around her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks. But the fineness of those lines belies the pain behind her. She thinks, sometimes, that if her heart was cut open by a surgeon – a surgeon, this time, instead of misfortune – they would find tally marks of thick scar tissue, in neat blocks of five, carved on the inside.

(Some open again like eyelids and weep blood, where the forceps prod.)

Ahsoka shakes herself out of her fancy. The intelligence has come in; a scant few Imperials managed to evacuate the Death Star before its destruction. Among them were a handful of engineers and petty officers, a couple of pilots, one cadet, someone's mistress, General Bast, and – because apparently she has not yet endured enough pain for the universe to be satisfied – two other men.

“Thank you, Ensign,” she says to the young man who brought her the news. She missed the official briefing. She had better things to do. Like holding Leia in her arms while the girl shook and dry heaved. Ahsoka wants the lad to leave. She retreated to her quarters to meditate, soothe the agony still lingering in her veins, in the force, from Alderaan.

But he goes on. “The exact whereabouts of...uh...Darth Vader are unknown as he was not with the escaping shuttle. Just that he was on the battle station but was confirmed alive. General Willard suspects he has gone to the Emperor. General Draven disagrees and believes he is with the other survivors aboard the _Executrix_.”

The ensign hesitates, glancing at the sleepless shadows under her eyes before going on apologetically. “There's to be a strategy meeting at oh-six-hundred hours. Your presence is requested.”

“Thank you,” Ahsoka says again. “I'll be there.”

 

She finally lets her consciousness begin to sink into the force, mapping a brief sketch of the Rebellion's compound – leftover ecstasy and adrenaline, relief, a rising sense of hope, threads of sorrow for the fallen, and the staticky pulses of grief roaring out of Leia's presence – before thinning out to a tendril and reaching out further, further.

The force is still raw and ringing with a sour note. There is a sense of a terrible wound in her, and of seeing the wound from another's perspective and only watching the blood seep outward.

Earlier, when the blow had struck, Ahsoka had been alone, on her way to meet an informant. She had fallen to her knees, head ringing as the wall of pain and horror slammed into her. Those screams. Millions of voices screaming. Millions of bodies breaking, disintegrating.

It's a sound she will _never_ be able to forget. Like the thrum of Mortis, or Barriss Offee's confession. Or Anakin – not-Anakin – calling her name as the Sith temple shattered around them.

 

Leia attends the strategy meeting. Her hair is in a plain, tidy braid, her eyes are red and tired. She's wearing clean fatigues and a poncho. Ahsoka squeezes her shoulder as she walks by.

“Alright, let's keep this quick,” says Draven, glancing at Leia with a sliver of sympathy. She replies with a jerky nod.

They didn't talk, before. Ahsoka had gone to see her as soon as she arrived on Yavin IV, shortly after the surviving pilots had returned triumphant. She'd paused outside the door of Leia's quarters. Hesitated. Heard the faint sound of screaming muffled as though by a pillow stuffed in a mouth. She'd knocked, and waited through a long abrupt silence until Leia let her in, gown crumpled, hair in disarray. There'd been something horrible and wild on the girl's face, some nameless wound, not quite grief, not quite despair.

Ahsoka recognized it. She'd seen it in the mirror more times than she cared to remember.

“Leia,” Ahsoka had said, husky with emotion, “Oh, can I hug you –” and the princess had buried her face in Ahsoka's shoulder and begun to shake like a leaf. Ahsoka had thought of Bail and Breha, and Padme, and cried into Leia's hair until she was keening and clutching the girl for dear life. Once or twice she had thought Leia was going to speak, but her mouth only opened and closed again wordlessly against Ahsoka's collarbone.

At long last Leia had fallen into an exhausted sleep and Ahsoka had cried out all her tears, and she gently laid the princess out on her bed and tucked a blanket around her, then crept away to find some caf and a fresher. No sooner had she settled down to meditate than the ensign had come in to tell her that the men responsible for all that grief and pain still lived.

“Tarkin lives,” says Draven, voice grating. “Bast lives. The Darth Vader lives, if it was ever alive in the first place.”

He says more, but the ringing fills her ears again and she hears none of it. Her knuckles turn white on the edge of the display table. She's a teenage girl again, younger than Leia – Tarkin trying to kill her, Anakin trying to save her, caught between and losing her agency, her freedom, her life's work, losing her very self, in danger of losing her life. She was too scared to be very angry then. Scared and shocked and hurt and betrayed. Padmé held her as she had held Leia...

Padmé's eyes meet hers from behind the blue display screen.

No, Leia's.

The same pretty brown eyes, but Leia's are burning, burning out of her skull.

 

* * *

* * *

 

The numbness drained away while she slept, and now Leia is filled with a thunderhead's rage. A bone-burning, acid-washed rage. She's always had them, these highs of fury, the rising need to go berserk – held back only by the rigorous training of a princess – but never like this. Never this deep and wild.

Tarkin lives.

“General,” she says to Draven. “I will be assuming authority over the question of Governor Tarkin. You will turn your efforts to locating Vader.”

“With respect, I believe the Tarkin question is answered. He's safe on the Executrix and protected by the Imperial Navy. It's a shame he didn't go down with the Death Star, but overall we achieved victory by a great margin and wasting resources trying to go after him to finish the job would be –”

Leia raises a hand and he falls silent. “Thank you. Your opinion is noted and appreciated. The Alliance will not dispatch a mission to pursue Tarkin. I expect to be kept informed of every development regarding Vader.”

“Yes, your Highness.”

“Then I believe this session is over,” Leia dismisses the room, snapping off the display with one hand. Ahsoka appears from the shadows, staring at her from across the table, then starts as from a dream and approaches her.

“Hey,” Ahsoka says softly. “I hope you got some sleep.”

“I did. What about you?”

“Not so much. Leia...”

“Yes?”

“You have some plan concerning Tarkin, don't you?”

Leia smiles, a harsh, bitter little twitch of the lips. “Well, you did just hear me say that the Alliance will not send anyone after him.”

“I did.”

“But, I'm not the whole Alliance. If I were to make a decision as Princess of Alderaan...”

“I don't have a very good feeling about this, Princess.”

Her smirk widens a little.

Ahsoka returns the smile.

 

* * *

 

Sabine Wren is adorable, and good at many things. Like art, and blowing things up (which is an art in its own right). Shooting things, melee combat, slicing.

And kissing.

And sex.

Truly, a woman of many talents. Not so good at diplomacy or tolerating the presence of men, but that's Leia's field.

Leia adores her.

But about the slicing.

It takes them a few days to obtain an astromech with the right kind of chip, but Sabine manages to slice open an Imperial shuttle timetable. Leia and Ahsoka go over it for hours, cross-referencing the jargon with a decoding file compiled by Fulcrum operatives, until they're certain they have a plan. By that time it's evening and Leia has been up since the ass crack of dawn, working nonstop, and they both go to rest and eat and change clothes before they depart.

As she lies awake, staring at the ceiling, trying to nap, there's a soft tap on her door. Leia frowns. They wouldn't just tap like that if it was an emergency, and the few people who would disturb her when she's left orders not to be disturbed probably wouldn't even bother to knock.

“Come in,” she calls. She's not getting any sleep anyway. The enormous gaping wound hanging in the air above her has seen to that.

“Hey.” Sabine slips into her quarters. She seems oddly subdued, anxious. She wanders around picking things up (a comb, a datapad, an empty mug – a pair of her own underwear under the bed?) and putting them back down again. Leia watches her movements silently.

“Anyway,” says Sabine, finally sitting down on the bed next to her, “I mean, I can guess what your mission is. More or less. So I just came to say I think it's kriffing stupid and foolhardy. Which is obviously the best kind of plan.”

Leia reaches out and laces their fingers together.

“Also, in case you don't come back I figured I should kiss you one last time. Not that I think you won't come back. You know how to shoot, and I mean you'll be with Ahsoka.”

Sabine clears her throat again. She looks uncertain whether to say something else or not, and finally shakes her head decisively, crimson hair flipping back and forth.

She scooches closer to Leia, who slides an arm around her waist and leans in. Sabine presses her lips to Leia's, eyes lightly closed, Leia gently mouthes at her upper lip. Their noses collide and Leia gives a hiccupy giggle, Sabine snorts, they adjust and press close again, tingling and heating. Leia hooks a hand behind Sabine's thigh. Sabine gasps against her mouth. Lust skitters down Leia's spine, she hauls Sabine into her lap, into her arms.

 

* * *

 

Later, she sits braiding her hair while Sabine ambles around looking for her clothes. They'd actually slept for a bit, and even if she doesn't exactly feel rested and refreshed, she certainly feels better. Calm. Focused.

Ready.

“So, uh.” Sabine comes up to sit on the bed beside her, leans in to rest her head on Leia's shoulder. “I have something for you.”

She takes a pair of vibroblade knives from her belt. They're small, just the right size for Leia's hands, sheathed in leather. Sabine draws one of them out of its sheath. The blade is dagger style, about fifteen centimetres long, with a wickedly sharp point and matte black finish. Leia's eyes gleam as she takes it in.

“Mandalorian make,” Sabine says, reverent. “They're quite not my style. These are stabbing blades. I prefer something a little longer, with a clip point, maybe an iridescent finish. But these are perfect for you.”

Leia wraps her fingers around the handle. The caramel-brown leather grip fits her hand perfectly.

“Thank you so much,” she manages. Her voice is rough with emotion. She flicks her wrist experimentally, trying to get a feel for the knife. “They're perfect.”

She sheaths the blade and sets them carefully on the bed next to her. She takes Sabine's hands in her own and kisses the backs of them, one at a time. Sabine rests her forehead against Leia's, and they sit like that for a moment.

Then Leia stands, looks around for some clothes. The blouse balled up by her foot is stained with days' worth of sweat, and she wrinkles her nose at it. Another shirt on the floor has soup crusted on the front. Stars, she needs to get her laundry done.

Her white dress from the eventful day she wore it to Scarif is hanging over the chair. It's reasonably clean. At least physically. She picks it up, shudders at the grim metallic smell of the detention cell that still clings to the fabric. It smells like death.

This was to have been her funeral shroud.

“Are you sure about that? Not the best for running or climbing, you know,” says Sabine. “Even though it is quite a look on you.”

Leia shrugs. “I shouldn't need to do much running if everything goes according to plan. Ahsoka does the hand-to-hand combat. I'm her cover fire and sniper if need be. It's just four to six crew, you know.”

 _Plus one_ goes unspoken.

“Good point. I could take them with one hand tied behind my back.”

Leia smiles fondly. “True.”

She yanks the white dress over her head. A belt with a sturdy holster goes around her waist, her favorite blaster at her hip. She laces up a pair of combat boots.

Finally, she reaches for the knives Sabine gave her and clips them to her belt, one on each side.

 

* * *

 

Leia sits with her palms squeezed together between her thighs in one of the Alliance's stolen, stripped TIEs. There's nowhere near enough room for both of them, Leia is jammed against a control panel at Ahsoka's elbow; more specifically, with one of Ahsoka's elbows in her face. The bomber that dropped them off has long since disappeared into hyperspace. Since then they've been cruising the cold void above Erskinia Minor, lying in wait.

“T-minus-ten,” Ahsoka says. “It won't be long now.”

The grey curve of barren rock stretches out gloomily below them. It was a stroke of luck that Tarkin had a routine oversight mission to the Imperial refinery on this planet, arranged before the Death Star disaster – Leia privately believes he'd refused to reschedule to give himself an excuse to avoid facing the Emperor for another few rotations. And if there were miles and miles of uninhabited steppe handy, in which to hunt down someone in a damaged shuttle, so much the better.

“Why not just blow them out of the sky and be done with it?” Luke had suggested, but Leia, who actually paid attention during technical briefings, told him a single TIE's cannons probably wouldn't be enough to fully destroy the shuttle. Not with the kind of shielding they had. She hadn't gone into detail about the primeval need to see something die to believe its death.

She hadn't expressed it to Ahsoka either.

She knew instinctively Ahsoka felt the same.

 

* * *

* * *

 

The shuttle comes out of hyperspace unobtrusively, almost meekly. Ahsoka jerks upright and pulls the controls, sending the TIE fighter into a smooth dive towards its rear. Leia leans forward and readies the cannons, fingers flying over the switches.

“You got our big guns ready?” Ahsoka says softly, fully focused on the shining bone-white shuttle before them. “We'll be in range in ten...nine...”

It wouldn't be terribly unusual for a lone TIE to be patrolling this far beyond the planet's atmosphere, but at the angle they were coming in it would be unmistakable to the shuttle crew that something was up. Sure enough, the comm – what the Alliance had left of it intact, anyway – crackles.

“State your number and mission, pilot, and adjust your course.”

The voice doesn't give away fear, but it seems too urgently spoken to be merely annoyed. Both women ignore the comm controls.

“Six...five...”

“Pilot, state your –”

 _They won't be able to accelerate fast enough,_ Ahsoka thinks, pulse pounding, _come on, a little more..._

“Two...one...now!”

Leia, squeezed against controls, sends a barrage of green energy bolts into the shuttle's rear. Ahsoka fights to keep the TIE on course, unaccustomed to how the guns firing affects the craft's flight. The shuttle pitches wildly, sparks and shrapnel spewing out of the hyperdrive, but not enough, not enough damage.

“Second pass,” Ahsoka says between her teeth. Leia releases the cannons' firing yoke as they swoop past the shuttle, her head knocking into Ahsoka's ribs as they swing around in a tight loop.

“We wounded them,” Leia says, peering out the viewports, “but it's going to take a lot more.” The comm is silent. “Clearly the crew isn't stupid enough to just yell at a clearly hostile ship and hope it works.”

Ahsoka snorts in laughter, hauling the craft around again. “Ready?”

“On your mark.”

“In range in ten...nine...”

The second pass tears off whole chunks of the hyperdrive. Fiery debris plumes out from the shuttle, forcing Ahsoka to swing wide to avoid it. They must have torn through some crucial shield, but it's still not enough, she can tell. Lambda-class shuttles are slow to maneuver and the pilots know better than to engage in a dogfight with a TIE, but if they can calculate and jump to hyperspace before she and Leia take out their hyperdrive, they'll get clean away. And then the two of them will have to beat it out of there and call for a pickup before they have a whole squadron of TIEs on their backs.

The shuttle picks up speed, trying to slip through their grasp. Ahsoka bites her lip and leans in. Beside her, she can hear Leia's teeth grinding together. The hyperdrive glows. They're going too fast to swing around again – they'll have to hold course and double back, she doesn't want to risk getting in front of the shuttle's guns.

“Ready?”

“On your mark.”

The Princess would be a formidable fighter with a lightsaber, Ahsoka thinks, with a pang of grief. Agile and relentless.

The third volley misses the target more that it hits, shearing pieces off of one fin and the hull, but even so it's enough. The hyperdrive explodes. A piece the size of the TIE they're in tears off amid the dust and metal fragments. Lurching and listing, the shuttle twists in place, turning its nose toward the cold breast of the planet below. Ahsoka adjusts course to tail it. Now that their prey cannot escape, they must drive it to ground – and _deal_ with it there.

“Wait,” says Leia, leaning forward. “They're disengaging the cockpit.”

Sure enough, the nose of the shuttle is disconnecting from the wounded body. The cockpit-turned-escape-pod speeds toward the surface, a dark little spot hurtling downwards. Ahsoka curses.

“Keep your eyes on them. They can't fly away in that thing, but they can hide. If we lose sight of it we'll never find them before it's too late and they call a squadron on us.”

If they haven't already.

Leia presses herself closer against the cold transparisteel. “Stay on course. Looks like they're just making a beeline for the surface. It's all just empty steppe down there.”

“Hang on tight, then. We're about to hit the atmosphere.”

The TIE screams as they hit. The planet's surface seems to rush up towards them as they chase after the escape pod, angling toward a vast expanse of grey rock, a plateau in the endless steppe. The Imperial refinery is impossibly far on foot; even if the crew in the pod managed to get a distress signal to the garrison there it will be some time before help arrives. This fight will have no quarter.

Steam rushes out from the pod's underside, thrusters to cushion landing. Ahsoka aims the TIE for a spot clear of rock a few hundred metres beyond. Leia's eyes are shining again, fingers clutching her blaster instinctively, as they touch down. It's a rough and sloppy landing, Ahsoka knows, but who cares. She powers everything down, checks that her lightsabers are safe at her belt.

As they come to a shuddering halt, finally, metal screeching against rock, she slams open the hatch and leaps out, perches there. It's a gloomy, chilly pre-dawn on the planet's surface. The escape pod waits, no one has tried to leave.

They are waiting there, for her, and for Leia.

He is.

“Let's go say hello,” she says to Leia grimly. She reaches down to help climb her up and out, and leap to the ground. They stand shoulder to shoulder for a moment on the hard rock, staring at the dark pod.

“You're ready?” Leia says.

Ahsoka ignites her sabers, swings them down in twin white streaks, humming with energy and purpose. “Yes.”

 

They advance.

For all the tension and adrenaline in her, nothing changes or happens until they are but thirty paces away. The figure steps out of the hatch, raising his weapon, and it's over in second. Leia drops to a crouch, fires and downs the man before Ahsoka even needs to raise her sabers. She knew the princess was good, but not that good. If she didn't know better she'd say it was the Force guiding her blaster bolts.

Ahsoka smiles with something like pride. _Bail raised that girl well._

_Padme would be proud._

So would Anakin, but she wipes the thought away.

Next come two at the same time. Ahsoka effortlessly deflects their shots, watches as one falls to Leia's fire and the other darts back inside. They're quite close now. They can almost see through the viewports, the three shadowy figures within.

She feels almost dreamlike as the two of them stride purposefully up to the hatch. They are here for one reason, and there is nothing that could stand between the two of them – two weathered, wounded, aching women, who have been to the deepest hells that can open inside a person and come back, two hounds, cold and grim, two turning wheels, two asteroids. Two tides.

One slash of her saber on the catch, sparks flying. She kicks the hatch open. Blaster fire meets them; she bats it away like flies as Leia drops and returns fire. One of the officers falls under her blades, the other to Leia's shot.

And then just one remains.

Tarkin lives.

She lowers her sabers, Leia holsters her gun. They stand silently there, in the shuttle cockpit that reeks of fear-sweat and electrical charring, watching him.

“Princess,” says Tarkin, in the same arrogant voice as always. “What a surprise to see you here.”

Neither of them says anything.

“And Padawan Tano. It's been a long time since I've seen you in person.”

Ahsoka moves fast, but it feels like her limbs are sluggishly dragging through water, through syrup. A vile pain is spreading from a fissure in her core. This man, this arrogant, vicious, heartless excuse for a man right in front of her here, who sunk his claws into Anakin, who tried his best to have her executed for crimes she didn't commit, when she was a child of sixteen.

She despises him.

She resents the pain he has added to her heart.

And yet, she knows, as she crosses her sabers at her neck, she would rather dispatch him as a service to the Rebellion. As a devastating blow to the Empire. She hates him personally, she hates him impersonally. The deciding factor is Leia.

Maybe they'd both known that all along.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Leia's ears scrape and ring with the sound of his voice. The place on her jaw and chin where he touched her face burn like a sun, radiation rot in her bones. Alderaan explodes before her eyes. Her parents die together, her name on their lips; her people die together, their lives on her shoulders.

She's gone through the why, the fury, the sobbing, the fiercely banished death wish. She's in for a lifetime of grief and guilt. She's a girl still.

And it's his doing.

The vibroblades leap to her hands of their own accord.

Something breaks audibly. A wet snap, like a weak and bloody bone.

She takes three steps into the cockpit and thrusts her daggers into his beady eyes.

Red and yellow mist rises into her eyes, she yanks the blades out, the slick sound of it barely audible behind the screaming; brings them next into his soughing neck, keeps one of them there to hold his head in place as he tries to double over, brings the other again and again into neck and shoulder and ribs. The blades rip through cloth and flesh with almost magical ease. His hands find her face again, no longer mocking but clawing, tearing, smearing blood, and she distantly realizes she ought to take care of those next.

_I am the only thing here with claws, do you understand?_

The knives sunder bone and tendon as easily as butter; something hits the floor of the cockpit with a wet slap, she returns to stabbing into those vital organs with all the animalistic energy welling from deep within her, flooding out.

He broke her, and, like a fool, thought it would leave no sharp edges. He ran his hand over her, and if the weak bubbling noise coming out of his sliced throat is any indication, he has lived to regret it.

The blood is truly gushing now, out of every stab and gouge and cut, and there are a lot of them – her arm hasn't stopped drawing back and thrusting in, her eyes haven't stopped finding targets, she is floating in blood and red haze, breathing the hot steam of fresh gore, so much fresh gore. The ragged bloody carcass is draped half over one of the command seats, streaming gore and juices from dozens of perforations, and the violent vicious power and strength that keeps her stabbing and stabbing and thrusting her blades burns stronger in her small body, everything burns, and everything bleeds.

 

* * *

 

Eventually the tide sinks, the tide of fury and pain and blood and pure hot hatred subsides.

Her arms ache. Her hands hurt from gripping the knife handles.

She is bloody.

She is ready.

It is done.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Ahsoka watches in the same detached, dreamlike state.

_Revenge is not the Jedi way._

_I am no Jedi._

_She is no Jedi._

Pain was their life sentence. Revenge is their birthright.

 

* * *

* * *

 

The white gown, her pretty white dress, is soaked in splashes of red blood. Irregular, and thick, spots and stripes and patches, all over it.

Ruined, but there's something fetching about it. Crimson on white.

She wipes her blades on a clean patch of her dress and sheaths them.

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time I had plans for a continuation of this, next generation, with Leia and Rey. It got lost in drafts and half-baked ideas but I could bring it back if there was interest. Thoughts? Input?


End file.
